There were no casseroles...
Daniela Puliti
There were no casseroles… is a solo exhibition by Daniela Puliti exploring multiple forms of communal grieving and funerary traditions. Pulling iconography from Puliti’s Roman Catholic upbringing accompanied by her current New Age Spiritualism, this exhibition explores trauma, loss, and grief by using personal narrative as a means to connect with the universal experience of death. Puliti’s use of textiles references her neurodivergence (anxiety, ADHD, ect.), weaving materials together in complicated and almost obsessive means. The large scale woven tapestry “You, Me, and Jesse’s Ghost”, serves as the main component of the installation. This piece functions as a memorial for her partner, who suffered an anoxic brain injury in January of 2019 and passed away mid-pandemic in 2020, unable to have a funeral.
The title of the exhibition, There were no casseroles…, is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the absence of a funeral, gathering, or opportunity to commiserate over a shared meal. As we emerge from this pandemic we do so with individual and collective PTSD. This exhibition serves as an invitation for healing, for all those who have passed, Covid related or not, and those who remain. Visitors are encouraged to walk around the installation, sit in the shadows, and have their own meditative experience.
About the Artist:
Daniela Puliti studied painting at Montclair State University (BFA, 2011) and The Savannah College of Art and Design (MFA, 2015). Puliti manipulates craft-based materials with an intuitive painter’s sensibility; creating installations, paintings, and mixed media works about gender, sexuality, vulnerability, and mental illness. She identifies as a gender-questioning femme, forever evaluating the shifting ideals around intersectional feminism within structural misogyny. She has participated in short term residencies at The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (NYC), Vermont Studio Center, The Wassaic Project and ChaNorth. Puliti is an alumna of the A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship Program in Brooklyn, NY (2017-2018), granting her first solo exhibition in NYC in February 2018. Daniela Puliti received a 2021 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
For more information on Daniela visit her website and follow her on Instagram.
